Based on the latest article that calls out a possible sale of Cigna Medicare as a precursor to a Humana-Cigna merger/sale...
I'll like to hear people's opinion as to which company they speculate would buy Cigna Medicare.
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FYI HCSC government employees are in the teamsters union
This is kinda weird, but as a Cigna Medicare employee... I find myself slowly starting to like the idea of HCSC buying Cigna Medicare. I know it's still a "rumor", but this might be a good thing.
The one rumored interested buyer is HCSC. To my knowledge they really don’t have an MA team like how Cigna MA is setup.
If that sale to HCSC happens most of MA could be “safe” but these days nothing is.
Another possibility that was posted on the Humana layoff secrion was that, Humana would sell off Centerwell and the PBM side to Walmart. Thus allowing the Humana merger to flow over smoothly with Cigna.
Something is going to happen, we just don’t know what.
There are so many news reports and commentary on the Humana - Cigna merger recently. In the many news articles I read, they all agree that it would be EASY for Cigna to divest it's Medicare business. Many disagree with it being a good decision and they question even if Cigna divests Medicare, several other antitrust roadblocks will stop the merger from happening. Specifically Cigna and Humana both having PBMs would trigger antitrust... unless Humana decides to divest their PBM as Cigna divests Medicare.
But this news (even if they are rumors) is very disheartening. I never knew how small Cigna Medicare really was until all these reports came out, we only have 2% of overall Medicare market-share. One of the larger MCO's could easily absorb us. With all these Medicare employee layoffs, news of large settlements, top Cigna Medicare leaders jumping ship months ago, and recent "rumors", it doesn't feel good to be a Medicare employee now. Leadership won't even deny these "rumors" which gives it validity. Begs the question of even if we survive the these layoffs and Cigna ends up divesting Medicare, how safe are we? Most likely, the other new health-plan has people to fill the roles we fill today?
But will the employees go with the merger or mass layoffs? At this point, I don’t even mind a layoff. I need a break. This has been the hardest year working here and I’ve worked here a very long time.
It makes sense considering how so may high ranking Medicare leaders left or were forced out of Cigna and how so many job eliminations initially effected Medicare employees early in 2023 before the October layoffs. I know of many Medicare employees (including myself) who are all applying to leave Cigna Medicare after FOW and recent layoffs. With these "rumors" of a Medicare sale, I can only imagine more employees jumping ship. Cigna will do it's best to post opening to new and young hires at a lower salary to fill the void. However with many well experienced Cigna Medicare employees leaving or being forced out, if/when Cigna ends up selling Medicare to the next buyer, "it" will be a shell of it's former self with a lot of gaps in institutional and industry knowledge. This type of knowledge is necessary for Medicare government businesses to be profitable. Otherwise you run risk of being out of compliance on so many things that a young inexperienced person may not know of tanking STARS ratings and revenue. We already are suffering with the many recent job eliminations we had already.
As for who I wish would buy us, I would like any company that happens to be a non-profit MCO. Cigna for profit/shareholder 1st mentality has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Cigna is in talks to buy out Humana. Cigna only has ~600K Medicare lives and Humana is a bigger player in the space. Also, Humana left the commercial space where Cigna is doing well. David wouldn't confirm nor deny in the town hall this morning, but the same happened when we started hearing about a Cigna/Anthem merger. Humana also had a town hall today and their CEO gave virtually the same non-answer answer. Check the Humana page on here for more info along with all the business news sites.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-cigna-humana-deal-makes-sense-analysts-193922233.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKxxNJkRzI-jOrrmBwZfgidQLZ9h2mScRdq0xdZ6bkXRUwBQ6mE9OJ0-fkHvu-Ww9qqIe_bOxdb4U9yIRytPvZFB7RYEEF7m4AOwkEuAaUY9GrejPaVuYoijq4Lw-DMCr5qtUqffjOSWBQxuN40U6h6NoJm9VoBLaGhkAs0YCQsL
The most surprising would be HCSC. A Bloomberg article mentions them eyeing the Cigna MA business.
In this crazy economy, I wouldn't be surprised if some way off company like Amazon buys Cigna Medicare.
Aetna or United possibly. But there may be concerns about the profitability of the Cigna MA membership since we’ve struggled running that business successfully. But somehow the person that ran that business was rewarded by being promoted to CFO. Meritocracy?